Al Qaeda vs ISIS: Two US projects threatening one another

Adam Gadahn. Picture: www.airliners.net

The last ABC News report may cause serious “seismic shifts” in the Middle East. Earlier this year, Al Qaeda was reported to pledge allegiance to the ISIS. Al Qaeda’s following activities in Yemen, Libya and Syria seemed to prove that.

But all of a sudden ABC News reported that one of Al Qaeda leaders and... a US citizen Adam Gadahn (better known Azzam the American) condemned ISIS fighters’ crimes against Muslims in Syria and Iraq and warned that they would be barred from heavenly afterlife if they continued acting like that. ABC News quotes Gadahn as saying that while no one can deny the considerable strength and prowess of the Islamic State group in military terms, at the same time, the crimes it has committed against Muslims cannot simply be overlooked. “Oppression of any kind is wrong, and [there] will be darkness for its perpetrator on the Day of Judgment. The Ummah's [Muslim community's] Jihad is not a video game; it is real life, with real consequences, in this world and the next,” Gadahn said.

This case is really unprecedented as nobody in the US government has ever mentioned the presence of US citizens with non-Muslim names in Al Qaeda.

Adam Gadahn’s appearance in the media space is both symbolic and symptomatic. It has reminded the world community of earlier reports that the US special services were privy to a number of Al Qaeda crimes and might even be the founders of that group and also of the fact that one of ISIS leaders (either dead or alive) was identified as either former prisoner of a secret US jail in Iraq or an agent of Israeli Mossad Simon Elliot.

Of course, we can imagine a situation when two US-founded groups – Al Qaeda and the ISIS – start a clash in the face of a presidential race in the United States. But the reality is that for the United States and especially for Turkey, it has become an unpleasant surprise that former enemies - Shias and Alawites, Shias, Alawites and Kurds, Kurds and non-Wahhabi Sunnis in Syria and Iraq – are now coming together. We can’t say for the moment whether Gadahn’s message will lead to Al Qaeda’s withdrawal from the IS or not. We can just remind you that once loyal Afghani Taliban has now declared Jihad against the ISIS.

Should this all result in the United States’ disappointment with the ISIS and return to the “Al Qaeda project,” pro-ISIS Turkey and Qatar will lose their game, while pro-Al Qaeda-Saudi Arabia will gain the upper hand.

We can also assume that Gadahn’s words were the United States’ response to the last Saudi-Russian agreements. They might be a kind of a message to the Saudis that the Americans are ready to fulfill some of their special wishes.